Wapke is an artist based in Rotterdam. She grew up on a cattle farm near the village Wjelsryp. This is in Friesland in the North of the Netherlands. Wapke is a founding member of myvillages.org
More info: www.wapke.nl

In November `A Photographic Portrait of a Landscape` will be ready! Now it is in the printers hands. We will celebrate and launch the book in 2013, but you might like to know that the book is available already.
A Photographic Portrait of a Landscape is a micro study that explores cultural centres and land ownership. The book is inspired by an album of photos from 1978 that show the Frisian village of Wjelsryp (which is Our Village) and contains a colorfull temporary visual-essay; a collation of recent landscape photos, photos taken by local residents, poetry, information about the land, and a grass herbarium.

Pietsie Feenstra's essay on cultural history takes us on a filmic journey through a terp landscape, interpreting and uncovering its secrets by sifting through photographic images and delving into archives. The theories of Ton Lemaire (Filosofie van het landschap,1970) and the post-colonial approach to culture of Homi K. Bhabha (The Location of Culture, 1994) are our guides on a journey through a landscape in the north of the Netherlands.

Also good to know; Beart Oosterhaven made eight new poems for this book - they are Frisian but also translated in English.
I really look forward to have this book in my hands.

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Soil in the East and the West.21 February 2012

Meadow of Farmer Deinum.

Last week I was visiting two farms (Deinum and Riedstra) with Gabriel Vriens, a specialist in soil and Frisian landscape. The idea was to describe the soil that can be found in the village. The failure of planned new sampling was due to frozen land - Gabriel bumped into ice-land with the auger at the depth of 15 cm. We worked with some samples of last spring and will come back to the farmland in April.
Also last week Siebe Haven gave me new tips on the village history. And Sikko Bruinsma had sent in covers of recent village-magazines. All this will be part of the book which has meanwhile a new title: A Photographic Portrait of a Landscape.

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The book will be ready in summer 201206 January 2012

New contributors are Linde Andriol with pictures of the last Village-Feast in 2011 and Maaike Feenstra (1 of my sisters) with local grass samples. A grant of the Mondriaan Fund makes it possible to concentrate on the production of the last bits.
My family and some villagers worked on this book the last years with e.g. the enthusiastic support of my mother Elizabeth Feenstra-de Groot. She died last Christmas, eighty years old.